until we break and we crumble to dust
by OpheliacAngel
Summary: The vision slithers in his head like a stream of chaos, wrecking each part of him that it touches. She knows she's killing them both. Fill for h/c bingo Round 7 for the prompt 'Alien Abduction.' Rick/June.


**Title:** until we break and we crumble to dust

 **Author:** OpheliacAngel

 **Pairing:** Rick/June

 **Genres:** Romance/Angst

 **Rating:** Teen

 **Summary:** The vision slithers in his head like a stream of chaos, wrecking each part of him that it touches.

She knows she's killing them both.

 **A/N:** Fill for h/c_bingo Round 7 for the prompt 'Alien Abduction.' This is an expansion of the vision Enchantress gives Rick in the film. The alien abduction refers to Enchantress; I went with a looser form of alien, since a goddess could be seen as an alien to humans.

 **A/N 2:** So I loved this film, despite all the negative reviews. I was especially impressed by Joel Kinnaman's performance and adored the relationship between him and June, both for how tender it was and also for serving as a contrast to Harley's and Joker's infinitely more twisted relationship.

 **Soundtrack:** Lacuna Coil's 'Blood, Tears, Dust'

* * *

 _~Time belongs to you and I_

 _There_ _'s nowhere else I wished I could be_

 _Mountains high, dark river flows_

 _The wind will blow_

 _Our fire will burn_ _… again~_

* * *

One moment she's there and the next she's gone; just for a flash of time.

One minute she's standing and it's not her, just buried so deep, and the next she's in a hospital bed and unmoving and it isn't real but it could be. _Will be._

The vision slithers in his head like a stream of chaos, wrecking each part of him that it touches. And it touches _every_ part like a poison, like the toxin that's invaded his dear June, the June he's only _just_ gotten to know and love and wants more than he's wanted anything else in his entire pitiful "owned by the government" existence.

They can't own or put a price tag on his heart, after all.

The certainty that the nightmare is just that, an illusion tearing at Rick's mind and serving as little more than a paralyzing distraction, slips like water through his fingers. Still, he fumbles like an idiot, it being no concern how lovestruck he is, trying to remember something _real_ and not a bone-deep knife slash of an image created by the whim of a monster. He would be ashamed at how quickly he forsakes control, loses track of the once sharp contrasts between dreams and waking, if he doesn't immediately start to panic.

That's how it always is with June. One look at her as those big, bright, intelligent and endlessly curious eyes look up at him and he's stripped bare, right there, on the spot. June is always curious about him, even though she already knows him inside and out because he'd never fight her on anything or push her out, even though there's _nothing_ to know. Just things that have to be put down on paper necessarily, the shit he's had to do, not things that _matter._

No, the only thing on paper other than credentials and mission details is: Rick Flag has been assigned to June Moone; Rick Flag has become compromised by June Moone. Once the latter's addition isn't useful anymore it'll no longer be acceptable on paper, but it won't mean any less to him like Waller thinks it will. As if this is just as mission, she's just a mission, his heart is set on mission and mission alone. _She_ won't mean any less to him, and he'll smile at that goddamn word _compromised_ every time, because what she's done to him and how she's done it is what he's been waiting for his whole damn life.

June knows this; she's always known how he's felt. The thing about Rick is he's never been one of those closed up guys. The few women he's had time to halfway commit to in the past years would argue differently, because he never got anything from opening himself up and so kept himself shut away firmly. Swallowing back the key.

That key-shaped hole in his heart kept stretching after every failed attempt at feeling pride and satisfaction with someone - _getting something in return_ \- rather than just losing himself in them with no gain.

Then he's assigned to June. Physically damaged June who is anything but emotionally damaged; June, who opens him up and doesn't make him regret it once. June, who always looks to him for help and is always there to comfort and in all the right ways. As soon as she's his, he vows never to close himself up again.

Everything he felt she would be allowed to see, because she could handle even the deepest and darkest crevices in him that he could scarcely face. Everything he thought and she would know it, probably even before he did, and even if it caught her off guard or scared her she would never hide.

How did he get so lucky?

Her open mind is what drove Rick to her in the first place. Her optimism and her unwavering sense of loyalty, both things that should have been ripped from her courtesy of Enchantress. That and she's so easily readable to Rick, which is why he knows the exact degree of her loyalty, the genuineness of her love.

It's not easy to love him, ask any one of his exes, but she crawled into him somehow.

Crawled inside him and held on.

And right then and there, Waller slips down to the number two spot.

Until Rick slowly begins to realize he'll have to make room for Enchantress too. As much as June wants to be there for him twenty-four seven, neither of them have any delusions as to the impossibility of that. The two work for Waller until death or early retirement, and chances are early will be much later. And he hopes that death will be much later.

As long as Enchantress is part of June, she will be used, Rick Flag's feelings getting hurt be damned. If he thought he could run, he would. Still, Enchantress needs to be dealt with.

Yet with every reappearance, Rick starts to lose control. As much as he hates it, he doesn't mind because it's _June,_ even when it isn't, even when she's buried down so deep under piles of ancient darkness and malice that he's lucky if he even sees a flicker of the real June. He has to watch as Enchantress eats at her from the inside out, until it's hardly June anymore when she comes back to him. Until it's hardly him as he holds her and feels nothing but the dread of what's coming.

And now _this_ is it. As if Enchantress isn't content with just half of June, just half his time, but needs _more._ Needs to wear down at June until she's this husk, wear down at him until he's on the floor, catatonic, on the floor and trying so hard not to scream as he resists getting shoved in Belle Reve just like the rest of them.

Not like it matters as June lays half naked on a hospital bed.

His _angel._

And _gods_ , did curiosity kill the cat this time.

"June." Her name is hollow to his ears, an effect it was never supposed to have. Because even if June's incredibly flexible form isn't wrapped around him literally, her name is always wrapped around his tongue, not as an afterthought but as his sole thought, all the damn time.

 _How can I take care of her? How can I save her? How can my love not be enough?_

His larger than life June stripped bare in front of him now, broken, dying if not already...

Rick swallows back the sob and it's like razors sliding down his throat; it might as well be because there's this pitiful, half-choking noise he makes as his numb feet somehow make it the small distance towards her. The nurses melt away into the background until there is just her lying on that small, white bed and an incessant beeping constantly mocking him.

He can barely see with the damned tears accumulating in his eyes, but he doesn't need to be able to see to know how she isn't registering anything, least of all him. And that's what breaks him, picks him up and rips him in half just so he can sink down on the bed beside her, barely able to hold himself upright, unable to feel anything but a mind-spinning, gut-churning mixture of rage and denial and a sadness so profound he doesn't think there's a word for it.

Did she know just how little he could stand this cruel, _cruel_ world without her?

The beeping stutters and blinks out for a second and his heart stops beating along with it, but then it picks up again and her index finger twitches, so minutely, like she can feel him.

It makes sense because she's _all_ he can feel.

He brushes the electrodes off her mostly bare, deathly cold chest after a moment of hesitation, pulling her forward and into his arms securely. She feels like little more than a limp rag doll except for the expanse of her cold flesh, a shock to his system. Her still beautiful hair, even while limp and near colorless, brushes against his cheek and makes his heartbeat sing after its dangerously slow beat. Rick knows she's still alive even without checking a pulse he knows is barely there at all. He holds her heart in his hands after all, looks down at it with awe, cradles it close to his chest at night as he sleeps.

He can't even look her in the eyes because he's so ashamed and so goddamn sorry. He was supposed to save her from this; she never should have succumbed to _this._

' _I have you,' June tells him with one of her knowing smiles. Like he's a present that she keeps unwrapping over and over, surprised with the same amount of joy and intensity every time even though it's the same gift. Even though he's the same guy. 'And you have me. I never would have made it this far without you, Rick. If you can't feel that,' she places her hand over his heart, 'then trust in it.'_

Rick wishes June would say those words to him again, just to push down the guilt for a while longer.

"It's okay, Rick," she murmurs, face pressed against his neck. It's amazing how much she still gives him even while like this, and he knows if Enchantress had taken over anyone but June they would have been _dead_ by now. The whole world stops and shuts up just to hear her speak, though Rick still strains, wants to memorize the precise rise and fall of her voice, wants to burn it into his memory, twist it into the fabric of every dream to pull him back when she's not here anymore. "It's just a nightmare."

The sound of her voice always did make him weak at the knees. He collapses in on himself somewhat, pulling her motionless form closer, a hand running so incredibly gently along her naked back because even though he's holding her now, so tightly she could be suffocating, his fingers can't bear to touch any specific part of her without hesitation. Without an initial light brush to see how she reacts, and even when she doesn't another brush to see how far he can take it without crumbling himself.

But it's like she doesn't feel anything at all, except that he's here. And he always will be.

The vision shatters around him. Enchantress laughs, hollow yet brittle, darkness encapsulated perfectly in a black streak of a smile.

Because she knows she's killing them both.

 **FIN**


End file.
